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Heartland Defence Force
The Heartland Defence Force (H; Heartland Importik Preserviartikistreiki, Z; Heartland Zhendyon Foyvurs), also known as the Zician or North Zician Defence Force, was a field army specialising in occupation duties and defensive warfare, active from ERA 09-49 to 09-59, during the Zician campaign of The Total War. While technically part of the Heartland military, the HDF is considered a non-regular force consisting of soldiers of different nationalities. History Immediately prior to their invasion of Zicia, the Heartland Military established the Heartland Defence Force. Comprised of personnel selected from the regular army and reserves, the formation, initially comprised of half a dozen divisions, was augmented by intelligence experts, translators, and a propaganda battalion for each division. The unit's formation was not only to restore order to the Zician territories after occupation, but to secure the cooperation of the area's military and civilian workforce. By the end of June ERA 09-50, Heartland had captured an area amounting to roughly half of the Zician peninsula, and established the puppet state of North Zicia. While the regular army pushed south, the Heartland Defence Force, which had been expanded to the size of sixteen Heartlandian divisions during the course of the fighting, was now in charge of a population of tens of millions, and expected to turn the territory into a complicit and productive extension of Heartland. Through a mixture of bargaining and violence, a large portion of the country was coerced into joining with Heartland by following the instruction of the government and the HDF. The well-developed armaments industry of the north soon allowed the HDF to be equipped almost entirely with domestically produced equipment, and local volunteers, offered more rations, in addition to improved housing and better standing for their families under the new bureaucracy, allowed the formation to swell to around 58 divisions - 60,000 Heartlandians, and about 900,000 North Zicians. When Heartland itself was invaded by the United Forces in ERA 09-52, the majority of Heartlandian nationals within the Defence Force were reassigned for defence of the homefront. To compensate, a larger number of Zicians were conscripted, and their activities more carefully scrutinised by an increasingly aggressive political corps - Heartland's grip over the North Zicians was already perceived to be loosening, as the formation was continually stripped of its component of loyal Heartlandian nationals. Despite this, defections and mutinies became less and less common as the war went on. Around this time, in acknowledgement of its new duties and predominance of locals in the ranks, the formation was renamed as the Zician Defence Force. By ERA 09-57, the nation of North Zicia had firmly established itself. The North Zician Armed Forces were formed from the almost entirely Zician Defence Force, leaving the ZDF a skeleton formation of Heartlandian nationals, who now became the political military police for the Norzics. At this time, after years of combat together, the foreign personnel of the ZDF had developed a great respect for the North Zican people, and were largely sympathetic to them. This is an explanation for why, when the North Zician Army rebelled in ERA 09-58, the ZDF generally refused to stop them. The gambit for independence failed as Heartlandian troops quickly crushed the insurrection, and worked to ensure it never happened again. As a result of this, the Heartland Defence Force was disbanded. Nearly all of its most experienced officers were shot in the aftermath of the revolt, with the remainder of the personnel reassigned to undesirable tasks within Heartland. The monitoring of the North Zician Forces became the duty of large and frequently rotated regular units of the HGF. Combat Duties The HDF/ZDFs main role was to maintain order in the occupied territories, and as such was limited in its offensive capacity. However, in its secondary role as a mainline combat unit, the HDF acted as an independent combat branch of the Heartland Ground Forces. Due to their equipment with inferior, domestically produced arms, in addition to the large numbers of non-Heartlandian conscripts and volunteers within the unit, they were typically seen as less effective and less willing to fight as Heartland's Regulars. However, many formations of the HDF demonstrated extreme fanaticism in combat. Primarily, the force fought against Zician Loyalists of the North Zician interior. These partisan suppression operations were often of extreme brutality in order to discourage further resistance, giving the HDF an infamous reputation. However, Imperial and South Zician offensives against the occupied territories were to be halted and reversed by the HDF - these adversaries adopted a more conventional style of warfare. The HDF not only fought on the Zician mainland, but also on its many island protectorates of the Great Channel. Additionally, tens of thousands of Zician military personnel were conscripted and relocated to Heartland itself during the campaign there. Equipment At their inception, the Heartland Defence Forces were entirely equipped with Heartlandian-produced weapons of the era. Once the invasion was underway however, the vast arsenals of surrendered and captured Zician military equipment, combined with the commandeering of the northern provinces productive armament factories, the HDF was increasingly issued domestically-produced weapons, vehicles and gear. Due to Heartland's intention of keeping the specification of its own materiel secret, much of the equipment was Zician-designed, and largely inferior to those of the central power. North Zician tanks, for example, had much thinner, riveted armour than contemporary Heartlandian tanks, which used sloped welded armour. This was not seen as a huge disadvantage, however, as the South Zician units they usually faced were similarly ill-equipped. Category:Premier Timeline